This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Hi everyone,


While I don't know if I have MS yet I really need to decide if I am going to finish my hep-b vaccine and get a flu shot yearly or drop out of nursing school. My fear is that I had two vaccines less than a week before having a variety on neurological symptoms.

I would like to know if anyone with a diagnosis of MS has gotten these or other vaccines and if so did you have a flare up?


Any comments would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you

I have the flu shot yearly & this past year a shingles shot. No reaction from the MS side.

hey there, i never get flu shot and i only had hep b done before travelling and almost immediately before dx in 2006.

i had to get a booster in dec 2011, no drama from it though.

if i go overseas in oct, i will have to get antimalarials and twinrix. i've been building my immune system up for so long now, i have no qualms about it at this stage, just a general conscientious objection.

it's completely your call.. for myself i have my lab requisition in hand, which will tell me if i need to do any extra supplementing to get my immune system's house in order before going for any travel vaccines.

I forgot to say the 2nd vaccine besides the HEP- B was tetanus. I had a UTI and finished taking a 10 day supply of Bactruim only a few days before the vaccines.

I wonder if this is why I got sick?

Thanks for your experience. I would appreciate it if people would keep commenting. I need to make up my mind and I think hearing what others do might help me decide. Especially if my SX keep going away.

Jimmylegs I'm wondering if you were having SX for a long time before you were DX or did it start with Hep-B?

oh yes, for a couple of years, but i had no idea i was playing with major fire. if anything, the vaccine could have been one of the final straws on the camel's back. or just a coincidence among everything else i was doing wrong. for certain, the physical trauma of my snowboarding crash was the very last thing before my ascending sensory loss and trips to the MRI lab. the vaccine was in early jan 06, the crash late in jan, dx by early feb.

Only vaccine I've had since diagnosis in '00 has been the whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus combo known as DTaP, this year. We had a whooping cough outbreak here in EC Iowa. No problems!

Please take everyone's experience as exactly that - other people's experience. I personally don't react to many medications. Took Avonex for 3 years with no (well, almost no) reactions. If I reacted to medications, I might not have gotten the shot.

But that's me! Individual results may vary.

about the UTI, that screams poor zinc status (to me anyway).. and since zinc is so critical to immune function, is known to be low in ms patients and can be inferred (via correlation with uric acid status fluctuations in ms) to be low during relapse. so i think that's part of the picture at very least.

went looking for a relevant study correlating serum zinc and UTI frequency. there must be more out there but this is what i was able to find quickly:

Micronutrient Deficiencies Are Associated with Impaired Immune Response and Higher Burden of Respiratory Infections in Elderly Ecuadorians
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646211/

"To better define the prevalence of infectious diseases and micronutrient deficiencies, assess immunological status, and evaluate associations between nutritional status and infection, we performed a cross-sectional study ... Participants (n = 352; mean age ± SD, 74.4 ± 6.4 y) recalled recent episodes of colds/influenza-like syndromes (62.8%), cough (61.0%), urinary tract infection (37.9%), diarrhea (32.2%), fever (24.1%), and pneumonia (3.5%). ... Anemia and micronutrient deficiencies, especially for vitamins C, D, B-6, and B-12 and folic acid and zinc, were common. Plasma vitamin C was associated with interferon-γ (IFNγ) (P < 0.01) and zinc with IFNγ and interleukin-2 (each P < 0.0001).

Table 2: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... able/tbl2/
.....................................................................................................% Deficient (JL: ie percent below 10.7)
Micronutrient...........Reference range.....Men (n = 125).....Women (n = 224).....Men.....Women
Serum zinc, μmol/L..........10.7–19.9..........11.6 ± 3.4...............11.4 ± 3.6.....41.3........45.4

as usual, the normal range given clearly does not represent a healthy range. there's no surprise these folks were sick.. no participant had a level above 15 umol/L. not good enough!

i used to get UTIs allll the tiiiime, chronic repeat abx, for a long time i was able to keep things in check using probiotics and herbs, but in the end it was zinc i needed to vanquish UTIs forever whew!

Sparky thank you for your input. I understand everyone is different. I never had any reactions to anything except I thought once while on levuquin my hands started to hurt. I was t sure if it was in my head fom reading the black box warning or coeincedental. But didn't want to risk it. So got something else to replace it and I report it as an allergy now. Being a military brat I had lots of vaccines traveling overseas as a child. I have my suspicions about why this happened.

Mercury poising- I have a lot of old silver fillings and I think tetnus has mercury not sure about hep-b but I think not.

Lyme- never saw a tick in me until a few weeks after symptoms began but I worked in my patio and yard going in the woods (deep) to dump brush and leaves. Before and after SX. Never checked for ticks until I was already sick.

Brought on by vaccine, Ive read Hep-B has been suspected of bringing on MS SX.


Weak immune system, I had frequent UTI's a 3 month cough last spring and shingles two years ago. I also know I haven't been good about eating my veggies and hardly ate any fruits. I like them but get an itch in my throat from a bunch of them.

I also wonder if this is not my first attack. It's definatley the worse thing I've ever had. But I recall once after being out in the sun at a double header redsox game on the way home my arms went numb. Maybe 20 mins. I thought dehydration. Another time while giving birth to my son they and my face went numb. Doc said it was pressure on my nerves. It went away as soon as he was born. It was only a few minutes. The one I think of most is about 6 years ago my arms were aching so bad I didn't want to use the PC. There was no numbness I can recall but it's exactly how my arms felt after the numbness came this time they ached the same way. That lasted a week or two. I know it was in the summer. One last thing would be occasional sharp nerve pain/attack in my rear. It would come randomly and in spurts, but only a few times for short periods over many many years. So maybe I had something going on for a while. I don't know.

Jimmylegs - I've gotten them on and off but last year in December I got one, then in february yet another and then April. Number three. It seemed to me in december it hadn't gone away completley. I lowded up on cranberry supplements which seemed to help. Same thing in February. That was the most frequency I ever had with getting them. I'm anxious to get my blood results back, I'm curious what they say.

I don't think you are too far off with just eating right and supplementing. Our bodied function optimally when things are in balance. We didn't come from eating straight sugar and carbs every day. Our bodies need what nature provides. Unfortunately it's too easy to eat bad and many if us give in to our cravings which is our bodies mechanism for getting as much food as possible, especially I'f it taste good, so In my case anyway I'd say I'm a sugar holic. I'm not over weight, lucky my body metabolizes what I eat. But I don't always make good choices.

I was exercising, P90x or insanity workouts, for the last few years. Not religiously but I've done the whole 90 days maybe missing two days. Then I took a break. Got sick, with shingles, that that was about 2 1/2 years ago. Thought I was too young for that at 39. Anyway sice then I would start up again on and off, had to stop here and there. Most recently in the end of Jan. I had hurt my lower back at work so went to chiro for 13 weeks on WC. Was just getting back to working out and now haven't done anything in nearly 3 months. Depressing.

I think I have more energy in my legs but just moving my arms repeadiatly at work makes me really feel shakey. I'm also worried about my lower abdomen muscle. It's felt like its been pulled. From nothing it's been like this for 4-5 weeks. Not sure if that's where my lower shake is coming from.
Oh well. I'll take it one day at a time.

Thanks so much for posting your experiences with vaccines. Please keep them coming!

.

Jimmylegs - I've gotten them on and off but last year in December I got one, then in february yet another and then April. Number three. It seemed to me in december it hadn't gone away completley. I lowded up on cranberry supplements which seemed to help. Same thing in February. That was the most frequency I ever had with getting them. I'm anxious to get my blood results back, I'm curious what they say.

I don't think you are too far off with just eating right and supplementing. Our bodied function optimally when things are in balance. We didn't come from eating straight sugar and carbs every day. Our bodies need what nature provides. Unfortunately it's too easy to eat bad and many if us give in to our cravings which is our bodies mechanism for getting as much food as possible, especially I'f it taste good, so In my case anyway I'd say I'm a sugar holic. I'm not over weight, lucky my body metabolizes what I eat. But I don't always make good choices.

I was exercising, P90x or insanity workouts, for the last few years. Not religiously but I've done the whole 90 days maybe missing two days. Then I took a break. Got sick, with shingles, that that was about 2 1/2 years ago. Thought I was too young for that at 39. Anyway sice then I would start up again on and off, had to stop here and there. Most recently in the end of Jan. I had hurt my lower back at work so went to chiro for 13 weeks on WC. Was just getting back to working out and now haven't done anything in nearly 3 months. Depressing.

ahhhh!!!! re p90x - did you do the supplement part of the program, or just the exercise??? i just recently helped a personal friend out of the hole she'd dug for herself via athletic nutrient depletion :S

I have had the flu, hep B, and tetanus vaccines all after MS dx. No negative effect from the inoculations.

Nope, I didn't think much about that aspect. I Thouroly ran my body down with weekend yard work, I'm talking a good 6 hrs worth both days on The weekends, lifing and moving heavy rocks draging tarps full of leaves and limbs into the woods which is down hill so coming up was a work out for my legs and I was doing insanity workout m-f. Its a lot more fast pace aerobics than P90x very little recovery between sets and exhausting. I wanted somthing different. My friend told me I might want to watch out becase I wasn't giving my body a break. I guess they were right, this crazyness, my vaccines combined with just coming off antibiotics probably messe up good.


As far as all of those who continue to post their experience with vaccines, thank you! It's encouraging that this is not affecting anyone negatively. Don't stop posting. I'm sure others are interested in what you have to say and this will be here always to help others get an idea if they are nervoious about it as I am.

Seeing that I was totally run down during my vaccination, I'm also wondering about those of you who already said they were unaffected if they made diatary changes including supplements after diagnoses? I'm trying to incorporate more good veggies in my diet and supplements. I have also cut way way back on my sugar intake. I haven't been totally successful in turning down icecream though, but i drink water instead of soda when i eat out and those tootsi rolls on my desk might gather some dust now, they used to get refilled almost daily. I'm making lasagna today, with meat squad zucchini and summer squash, onions bell peppers carrots and broccoli! Yumm. Getting off track here. I know that if you posted here jimmegs probably found you post and evaluated your nutritional stats. . Any way please chime in and
Let me know if you made changes. I'm curious if that's maybe why I crashed like this. Its great to have so much input from others who have similar issues. Thank you!

PS I have my blood test results. I'm goiong to post them in the next day or so. It's a lot easier to do it on the computer than my phone.

awesome! major exercise, bad diet, no supplements.. that's a MASSIVE piece of the puzzle. back story is so important. i think you will be able to get your immune system back into shape so that you can handle any vaccines you need. looking forward to seeing your results!!

Flu shot back in Fall 2002. Numbness in hand + other MS symptoms 5 (five) days later. MS diagnosis 6 months later. Straw that broke this monkey's back? One of my specialists believed there was a link. Seems like a high price for a chance of avoiding the flu. This past winter was the first in years/decades/ever that I did not get a single cold. This was also the first year I started taking ZINC daily.

xo ;)

world without zinc